Status indicators such as Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) can interpret states of drives or slots on a backplane. States for drives or slots include, for example, active, empty, failed, rebuilding, etc. The state of a drive or slot is traditionally determined by the host bus adapter, and is typically transmitted to the backplane through Serial General Purpose Input/Output (SGPIO) signals. For example, in a storage device hot-removal process which does not require a system shut-down, a LED can turn off to indicate that a storage drive is powered off, making it safe to be removed from the system.
The International Blinking Pattern Interpretation (IBPI) is an internal computer hardware standard defined by the Small Form Factor committee (SFF). The IBPI defines the rules to interpret SGPIO into states for drives or slots on a backplane. In addition, the IBPI also provides the display patterns for the LEDs to represent these states.
However, since it is based on earlier technologies, the IBPI lacks sufficient specifications for interpreting the numerous states of solid state drives (SSDs), which have became a popular storage choice due to its excellent performance.